Biography

Shu Cai is a Postdoc in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at University of California, Davis (UC Davis). Dr. Cai has 10 years of research experiences with biodegradation of recalcitrant pollutants, key biodegradation gene cloning, wastewater treatment and bioplastic production. He recently led a research project for converting waste sugar and volatile fatty acid into polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) using a Paracoccus sp. strain. Dr. Cai is also an expert in the field of wastewater treatment and biodegradation of recalcitrant toxic pollutants. He had led a Chinese National Nature Science Foundation (Molecular mechanism study of a direct cleavage angular dioxygenase for diphenyl ether pollutants) as a principle investigator during 2017-2019. He has successfully isolated several functional bacteria which are capable of degrading recalcitrant and toxic pollutants existing in soil and wastewater such as diphenyl ether, 2-carboxy diphenyl ether, phenol, piperazine, etc. He has also proposed the metabolic pathway of these pollutants in these bacteria and further cloned the key functional gene responsible for degradation. He has over sixteen scientific publications and five patents.

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Research Interest

Biopolymers